


you carry my fears (until the heavens set fire)

by Marked_by_moonlight



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Black Family-centric (Harry Potter), F/M, Gen, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hufflepuff Pride, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Not Epilogue Compliant, Slytherin Pride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:21:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23539786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marked_by_moonlight/pseuds/Marked_by_moonlight
Summary: In which Andromeda Tonks goes to the Battle of Hogwarts.In which Andromeda Tonks uses Hufflepuff House traits to kill one of Voldemort’s most valuable death eaters.
Relationships: Andromeda Black Tonks/Ted Tonks, Bellatrix Black Lestrange & Andromeda Black Tonks, Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks
Comments: 9
Kudos: 54





	you carry my fears (until the heavens set fire)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dirgewithoutmusic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirgewithoutmusic/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don’t own HP.
> 
> This is AU. Fuck Canon and the Hippogriff it rode in on.
> 
> Don’t like it, don’t read.
> 
> Special Thanks to dirgewithoutmusic, who inspired me to write this fic!

It starts like this.

Andromeda Black asks Edward Tonks about a pencil in the Hogwarts Library.

—

Here is the in between.

Andromeda is, and always will be, a Black. She knows the press of the dark, knows how to hide, to wait until she can sink her fangs into her unwitting enemies.

Her daughter (her half blood daughter, that bigoted part of her whispers) marries a werewolf ten years her senior in a muggle church.

Nymphadora’s side of the isle is filled with Ted’s family, Remus Lupin’s is empty, filled with only ghosts.

She watches them be wed, and fervently hopes that her wretched bitch of a sister drops dead. The universe was never so kind to the Black Sisters, though, so ten months later, Andromeda Tonks faces her eldest sister for the first time in over thirty years.

Andromeda’s wild curls, so like Bella’s, are wrangled into a bun on top of her head. A wooden pencil sits nestled in those dark chestnut locks.

She has nothing to fear from sea serpents. Not anymore, because she may have been raised around Slytherins, but she had spent over half her life surrounded by Hufflepuffs.

The thing about Hufflepuff’s mascot is, they eat snakes. She had learned it from one of those nature documentaries that Ted left on when he was folding laundry. Honey Badgers were omnivorous and over twenty five percent of their diet consisted of highly venomous snakes.

Loyalty, Kindness, these were the traits of Hufflepuff House, but Andromeda has also learned of an unrelenting tenacity. She saw it in the set of Ted’s shoulders during an argument, in the stubborn lift of Nymphadora’s head.

The unwillingness to back down, even when the enemy was far more dangerous than you could ever hope to be.

It is this that she carries with her into a school aflame. Hogwarts flashes with spell fire from all directions, but Andromeda seeks out her sister first. 

Leaves little Teddy Lupin with a first year Muggleborn in the Great Hall whose blonde hair is already streaked with blood, and whose robes are trimmed with green.

It ends where it began.

In the Hogwarts Library, between the shelves. Halfway through the fight, Andromeda loses her wand and as Bellatrix looms over her, she moves. She moves not as a snake, but as a badger. 

Her long bony fingers grip that pencil, with its sharp point of graphite, and murders her sister with it.

—

It ends like this.

Andromeda Tonks loses her wand and uses that very same pencil to kill her eldest sister.


End file.
